


Just Waiting ‘Til the Shine Wears Off

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Post-2x23, season 2 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5303273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-2x23 Olicity. Felicity’s got a head wound, Oliver spends the night at her apartment to make sure she’s okay. </p>
<p>"This feels like one of those uncrossable lines, one of those unthinkable boundaries, the ones he’s started drawing in pencil so they’re easier to erase as he slowly inches his way towards her."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Waiting ‘Til the Shine Wears Off

_A/N: Inspired by[this post](http://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/post/133973914229/dettiot-acheaptrickandacheesyoneline). Dedicated to the Tumblr instigators.  
_

_Title from “[Lost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjYjKNGt18k)” by Coldplay._

**Just Waiting ‘Til the Shine Wears Off**

Felicity doesn’t speak to him on their flights back home, just huddles in beside Digg and keeps her eyes low. He’s distracted on the charter, because he’s flying it, but when they board the jet back to Starling and she does the same thing, his stomach sinks like it’s full of lead. Once they’re at cruising altitude, she whispers something to John and he grabs a prescription bottle from his bag, handing her a pill and shaking out two for himself. He offers them next to Oliver, who just shakes his head.

“Wake us up every hour,” Digg tells him in response. “She took a bad blow to the head, I’m still not sure she’s out of the woods for a concussion.”

It’s extra worrying that Felicity doesn’t even really fight them on it. She just kind of slumps in against Digg as her eyelids drop closed and it’s surely just a coincidence that Oliver’s injured shoulder starts burning at that moment.

He doesn’t sleep, he just watches her. Watches some of the color thankfully return to her face while she dozes, watches her eyelids flutter. He takes in her content expression, shoving down the fresh, painful memory of how she had looked at him when he pressed the syringe into her palm in the foyer of his family’s home.

When they land back in the city, his umpteenth return to Starling, Diggle doesn’t even make a move to lift her from the recliner seat, letting Oliver lean over to brush the hair from her face before scooping her into his arms. His knee still hurts like a bitch, but there’s not even another option he’s willing to consider right now.

“You can put her in my car,” John tells him once they’re on the tarmac. “You brought your bike?”

He did. But…

“Someone needs to keep waking her up.”

“That why I’m taking her to my place.” Digg says, like he should have had this figured out already.

“You don’t have to do that,” Oliver says quickly, unsure of how to cover his obvious intentions, yet still unwilling to let her out of his sight right now. “Drop us both at her apartment, I’ll stay with her.”

“Oliver, I’m just not so sure that’s a good idea.” Something in his friend’s eyes makes him feel like he’s being scolded, but even if Digg’s right, Oliver’s ready to go a dozen rounds on this, and he knows his partner is as tired as he is.

“Digg, _please_.”

The other man gives him a long hard look that tells him a simple plea isn’t enough to convince him. In almost any other situation, Oliver would be thanking his lucky stars that someone else is as concerned about Felicity’s wellbeing.

“You’re exhausted,” he tries a different tack, trying not to sound like he’s begging, though they both know better. “I’m sure Lyla is too. Please. I need to do this.”

A long sigh. Another all-knowing crook of the eyebrow. “Wake her every two hours. Oliver, you have to be…”

“You really think I’m going to sleep while she’s hurt?” His friend just conceded, gave in to him and what he wants, so of course, Oliver’s first response is to snap at him. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe he has even two people left by his side at this point.

But John just looks at him with something close to understanding and nods once, slowly.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll take you two home.”

* * *

Oliver gets her inside her apartment and into bed easily enough, it’s after that when things get complicated. He can only handle removing her shoes, socks, and jacket, though the last one becomes a tricky tangle that nearly has him toppling onto the bed next to her. The rest will have to stay as it is.

He ducks into her bathroom for a warm, wet washcloth, because he can’t stand to look at the dried blood on her forehead for a minute longer. Lowering himself gently onto the bed beside her, on top of the covers, he allows a moment of closeness to erase the visible evidence of how near he came to losing her for good. He’s cleaned almost all the blood off when she stirs, leaning into his hand and nuzzling his palm. It ignites a fire inside of him, something he knows could very easily burn them both alive.

“Oliver?” His name on her lips is sleep-soaked and makes his breath catch in his throat.

“I’m here.” He practically chokes on the words, pulling his hand back as gently as possibly. She hums softly, and his fingers return as if magnetized, to push some hair from her face.

“Okay,” Felicity murmurs, on her way back to unconsciousness. “Will you stay?”

It’s the whole reason he’s here in the first place, and yet when she says the words out loud, his first gut instinct says to bolt. Maybe Digg was right. This feels like one of those uncrossable lines, one of those “unthinkable” boundaries, the ones he’s started drawing in pencil so they’re easier to erase as he slowly inches his way towards her.

“Yeah,” he grabs a pillow from the floor to put between his back and her headboard and checks the digital clock over her shoulder. Just past eleven. “I’ll stay.”

* * *

He doesn’t even have to wait for 1 a.m., she starts thrashing around the throws of a nightmare around 12:50. He wants to give her a minute, see if she’ll just sleep her way through it, but his heart hardens to stone when his name is the first pained word to leave her lips.

“Oliver, no…” It sounds like she’s begging as she continues to toss, and he grabs her wrists, rolling his thumbs in circles on her soft skin, trying to still her, calm her without waking her.

“ _Please_ ,” she whimpers, and he thinks of all the things he’s done to men who have made her sound like that. “Please, don’t leave me.”

Those words shred the last of his resolve, and he’s shaking her gently, rocking her as he holds tight to her wrists. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He’s the one begging now. “Felicity, I’m here.”

Her eyes open slowly, and he feels her arms tense under his grasp for just a second, before she relaxes and lays back, exhaling a heavy breath. “You saved me.”

Her eyes blink lazily up at him, and that’s when he realizes he’s still hovering his upper body over hers, their faces are mere inches apart. He rolls off to the side, letting go of one of her arms as he flops onto the pillow beside her. He brings the other down to lace her fingers through his, because he’s nothing if not selfish.

“I was the reason you were in danger in the first place.”

She’s still under a haze of painkillers and spent adrenaline or she’d probably fight him on that too. Instead, she just moves in closer, keeping their hands trapped between their bodies, pressing her lips to his shoulder, muffling her next words into the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“You love me.”

Seconds later, she’s snoring, and he’s grateful for that, because he’s not sure he’s got it in him to lie to her again.

* * *

She wakes easily at 3 a.m. for some reason, and is almost lucid, if totally confused.

“Oliver?” Her eyes go wide at the sight of him in her bed, and she actually checks under the covers, presumably to gauge her stage of dress. Under different circumstances, he might find her confusion adorable. But he’s been laying there for two hours, holding her hand, and he can’t quite figure out if it felt like five minutes or a lifetime.

“I’m here.”

“But…why?”

“You have a head wound,” he explains, watching the wheels turn, still a little sideways, in her head. “I have to wake you up every few hours to make sure you’re okay.”

“Okay, wow,” she groans, rubbing at her temple, “you’re going to have to be my Katniss real quick.” Even sleepy and half-doped up, she’s subconsciously trying to catch him with a cultural reference, and that actually makes the corners of his mouth twitch.

What she doesn’t know is how much Thea secretly loved those books back when she was crashing her way through high school as a cool kid. The first time he got seriously laid up from a night out as The Hood, he had found them in the mansion and worked his way through over a long weekend, barely sleeping, riveted by the story and its heroine. He remembers his vision blurring when the second round of bombs went off at the end of Mockingjay, and it had taken a few minutes for him to realize that he was sobbing.

“I do have the bow,” he smirks, coming back to her, allowing the grin to split wide when her eyes and mouth go round with surprise. Her eyes remain a little clouded with painkillers, but they’re still the most brilliant he’s ever seen. “How’s your head?”

“It’s fine,” she insists. “I’m just a little loopy. Okay, real or not real…we went to Lian Yu?”

“Real.” He’s seen her on that island twice now, which is two times too many.

“Real or not real, we got to Slade in time, everyone’s okay.”

“Real.”

“Laurel?”

“She’s okay.”

It’s a true stream of consciousness, so she stops cold in her tracks when she follows her hazy memory to the next part. “Real or not real, you…oh…”

Her eyes flash to his for a split second and he tries for contrition, but probably fails. If her reaction is more heartbreak than betrayal, well, he hates himself all the same.

She turns away from him then, tucking into herself without another word, and he figures that’s got to be the worst of it. He’s such an idiot.

* * *

His phone starts shrieking at 5 a.m. and the first thing he realizes is that he actually fell asleep, even if it feels like it was just for a few seconds.

The second thing, is that she’s completely wrapped around him. She’s tucked into his side, where his traitorous hand traces circles on her back, and one of her legs has worked its way out from under the covers to thread through his, making it so that she’s sort of straddling his hip from the side. What’s worse, each tiny attempt he makes to extricate himself only makes her clutch him tighter.

“Felicity,” he whispers finally, trying to wake her enough so that she’ll snap out of it. She’ll pull away, it might be a little awkward for a moment, but it’s for the best. Anything is better than this agony, this feeling he’s dreamed of more times than he’d ever admit, happening for all the wrong reasons.

Then her lips start to trail up his neck, and he shivers from the base of his spine, though he’s not cold in the slightest. “Felicity, stop,” he croaks out finally, and she does, pulling back a little, but never opening her eyes.

“Says he loves me,” she mutters, clearly still half-asleep, “won’t even kiss me.”

She pouts a little, and – again, so selfish – he covers those downturned lips with his own. He just can’t help himself anymore. This is something he should have done back in the foyer of his parents’ home, and maybe a hundred times before then.

He brushes his mouth against hers, softly at first, but when she grasps at the back of his head, he allows himself one moment to fully sink into her, tongue tangling around hers, throat swallowing the tiny noise she makes.

The taste of her is more like coming home than the skyline outside her window and it reminds him that she’s everything he’s not supposed to have. When he pulls back, they’re both gasping, but for different reasons. “Believe me?”

It’s not a question he has any right to ask, so he knows he deserves the answer he gets. It doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking.

“Yes,” she murmurs, drowsy and deep. “I love you, too.”

* * *

When the alarm goes off at 7 a.m., his eyes blink open and she’s just lying there, wide awake, staring at him.

“Hey,” he offers carefully, entirely unsure of where her head’s at. Not that it’s markedly different from interacting with her on a normal basis.

“Hi.” Her eyes are still brilliant and finally clear, and he knows the intensity of her gaze, from anyone else, would make him squirm.  But she’s always had this way of calming him through to his bones.

“Felicity, I…” He starts the sentence before realizing he has absolutely no idea what he’s supposed to say, where even to begin. Because he’s told her he loves her and woken up in her bed within a span of 24 hours and both of those things are somehow real and not real at the same time, true and not true in the same, shared breath.

“I know I should probably tell you to leave,” she interrupts, voice cooler than he’d like it. The only reason his heart doesn’t break clean in two is because it sounds like there’s more. “I just…I really want you to stay.”

He huffs a breath out his nose, knowing that he wants nothing more than to give her everything she’s asking for, but just as unable to lie to her as he’s been all night. “Give it two more hours.”

She nods softly, and turns in his arms, away from him, though she snuggles back to spoon against him. He breathes in the scent of her hair, waits for her breathing to even out before he leans in close, lips brushing the shell of her ear as he whispers.

“Real.”

* * *

When the alarm goes off at 9 a.m., he’s gone.


End file.
